A Sojourn
Let me tell you a story.
Once there was a prince who thought he was a commoner. He was right and the world was right and they were both a little wrong, too.
The prince wanted to go among the saddest people in his shire, and there he found anger and desperation. The prince was scared and he ran to the suburbs.
But the anger and desperation followed the prince. It festered in others - in himself - until a huge blister grew on the tender skin of the prince's arm.
As the blister festered, others saw it and ran away or turned to him in anger. "Take care of this blister yourself!" they yelled. They didn't know, though, that the prince-commoner didn't have a way of doing so.
On the last day of the prince's time in the angry suburbs, a man came to the prince. He had brown hair and gentle eyes. "How are you?" asked the man.
"Go fuck yourself!" spat the prince. He was tired of commoners mistreating him. He was also scared of his own tenderness that he couldn't even look the kind man in the eyes.
The kind man didn't move. He cocked his head instead.
"Take this," he said with an outreached hand. There was a silver ring, gleaming. The prince shakily took the ring. He was unsure of what to do with it.
The ring began to grow a balm, gentle and green, in the middle. It shimmered. And when the prince raised it above the blister on his arm, the blister calmed and he felt less
angry and less desperate.
The prince put the ring-balm in his heart. To this very day, when he feels unfeelable emotions he brings the balm out, places it above his blister - now a faint scar on his arm - and squeezes balm into the blister.
The anger and the desperation subside, and the prince continues on his way.
He never saw the kind man again, but when he returns in his memory to the blistery shire, he enters through that man's eyes.
The end.